Students must take a moment to appreciate custodial staff

As students at Occidental, or at any other residential college, we live in a well-oiled machine that feeds us, cleans up after us and beautifies our environment. Encouraged to spend the maximum amount of time and energy on academics, we are gifted with the bliss of abandoning the boring, routine activities of home life such as cooking, cleaning and decorating.

It is easy to forget that hundreds of employees do these tasks for us. They blend easily into the background, invisible to students preoccupied with classes, social life and our selfish needs.

In the early morning though, before the Marketplace or the Green Bean Coffee Lounge are open, the campus is teeming with workers. They clip the rose bushes, wash the sidewalks, cook our meals, Windex our windows and unclog our drains. Around 8 a.m., the campus floods with rivers of students, and the staff workforce blends into the background once again.

Growing up, many of us helped out at home consistently and had a list of daily chores. Now, it is easy to neglect simple tasks at home such as clearing one’s plate off the table, washing dishes, wiping down the bathroom sink, unclogging the toilet and cooking meals. Our mothers may be shocked, but such neglect is not surprising.

Many students seem to have forgotten that such tasks must be done at all. When we graduate, or move off campus, little things such as wiping down the counter in the bathroom or emptying the trash will become realities in our lives again.

Students should take time to appreciate the staff on campus. And for our own sakes, we should at least take time to remember that we are, while we are living on campus, exempt from doing hours worth of daily chores and upkeep that we will most likely be saddled with again soon. We are not living in reality; take a moment to appreciate it.

This editorial represents the collective opinion of The Occidental Weekly Editorial Board. Each week, the editorial board will publish its viewpoint on a matter relevant to the Occidental community.